Pennies from heaven – or, a ‘Corpse’ Flower by any other name …

The education proposals outlined by John Key in his State of the Nation speech have blossomed spectacularly today – like Auckland’s ‘Corpse Flower‘ – attracting a surprising band of over-awed onlookers.

The intent of the education initiatives is clear enough.

In fact, same intent as usual; but very different tactic. And, of course, suitably different given that we are now in election year.

More generally, it’s also become very clear from this announcement and news about the economy, that the ‘all’s well‘ good news ‘vibe’ will be pushed, relentlessly, by National for the next nine months or so.

Time, then, to turn up the scepticism dial to ‘High’.

There’s an old tale about the sun and the wind competing with each other to remove the coat off the back of a man walking along a track on the earth below: The wind goes first, blowing furiously with increasing intensity.

At last it gives in. All its fury achieved was to make the man clutch his coat to himself more tightly.

The sun then takes its turn: It shines down with apparent benign intent. Slowly but surely the man unbuttons his coat and then, as the sun smiles triumphantly, removes it and tosses it aside.

If I was in the teaching profession I think I’d be a bit startled by the sudden change in the weather. One day (well, actually, for quite a few years) the skies have been dark, foreboding and positively stormy.

Then the sun breaks through in a dazzling display (of money, at least). We’re all now used to dramatic weather events but even late-stage climate change couldn’t explain this dramatic reversal.

Or perhaps it’s not a reversal.

Clues that things haven’t really changed in this government’s view of education aren’t difficult to find.

The four positions – which will not be put in place at every school – include:

Executive principals will provide leadership across a community of schools, and be paid an additional allowance of $40,000 a year. Each will work with an average of 10 schools.

Change principals will be employed to lift achievement in schools that are struggling. About 20 of these positions will be needed a year, and principals in this role will be given an additional $50,000 a year.

Lead teachers will be “highly capable” school teachers who will act as role models for those in their own school and those in their area. The Government anticipates around 5000 will be needed.

Expert teachers will work with executive principals and include experts in areas like maths and science.

The Herald estimates the following numbers for the package which will involve $359m over three years:

As I said, the intent of these changes is clear: It is to achieve the goal of creating an environment in the education system that reflects the broad neo-liberal and corporatist environment that dominates most other parts of the public sector and economy in general.

It also has the effect of undermining collective approaches. With the prospects of some 6,000+ teachers and principals competing for such lucrative opportunities expect a fairly major, and possibly brutal, division of the teaching profession into two tiers with quite distinct and conflicting interests.

By creating an elite band of teachers, personal ambition will be suitably stoked which has the inevitable by-product of increasing individuals’ focus on their own career trajectories.

Teachers may be genuine and committed professionals but they are also only human. There is no reason to suspect that, in the long-term, they will react any differently from any of the other social groups to which this treatment has been ‘delivered’ (often through harsher means).

And, of course, teachers – and their representatives – should not be blamed for welcoming the possibility – for around 10% of them, at least – to achieve significantly higher salaries while still being involved in some form of ‘teaching’. One of the outcomes of having kept teacher salaries depressed is that this carrot no doubt looks very edible.

Once this structure beds in, then stand by and watch as attitudes, values and commitments change – perhaps only subtly for those currently in the profession but quite sharply for new entrants. (In case of any doubt, current use of the concepts of ‘collaboration’ and ‘best practice’ is generally newspeak for ‘economies of scale’ and ‘standardisation of practice’.).

A final effect of such changes will be to lay further groundwork for the incremental introduction of the private sector into the public education system. Once an identifiable pool of ‘elite’ teachers is identified then the temptation – for such teachers as well as the government – will be to introduce private providers who can cherry-pick.

Charter schools are the obvious entry point – given that their operations (including salaries) are beyond the reach of the Official Information Act. But there are other mechanisms – increasingly well-funded private schools (courtesy of increased taxpayer contributions), well-endowed integrated schools and the like. The ‘demand’ for private sector participation (and remuneration), that is, will increase – and, inevitably, will also start to come from teachers; the psychological logic of ‘the way the world is’ will start to bear down on even the most saintly.

In the education sector this is indeed a major piece of engineering; but what it also represents, given the centrality of schools to many communities and families, is a major piece of social engineering – of a scale perhaps not seen since the 1980s and early 1990s. To change the material and economic structures within which education functions is to achieve something quite deep in a modern society.

Unlike previous attempts to introduce these changes into the compulsory education sector, this proposal eschews the coercive approach which, to date, had been favoured.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of the National Party strategic command, the penny dropped. That penny was basically that a better way to defang the stubbornly collective education sector may well be to drop plenty of pennies onto the education sector.

And, just like the 1978 TV series ‘Pennies from Heaven‘, we have had the surreal experience of most commentators – even union representatives – suddenly breaking out their tap dancing shoes and miming to upbeat tunes that surely haven’t been hummed since some previous golden age of innocence.

PPTA President Angela Roberts said she was “cautiously optimistic” and welcomed the extra resourcing to support teachers, as well as greater collaboration between teachers across schools.

She said its ability to work as intended would depend on how it was implemented, but welcomed Mr Key’s promise that the profession would be involved in implementing the new roles.

…

She said it provided the potential for good teachers to advance their careers without having to leave the classroom to take up leadership positions.

“It feels like what they have done is not just recognise and reward the great teachers, but once they’ve recognised those great teachers they will treat them for what they are, which is a great resource, and enable them to support their colleagues.”

“It’s hard for me to say it but I’m pretty damned impressed. It is a huge amount of new money and I have never seen such a transformation of ideas and discussion into policy and money in my life. It has gone from a theoretical discussion about how the system needed to evolve and change just last year to the appropriation of significant resource.”

He was hopeful it would work as intended and believed the $50,000 financial incentives for good principals to take on challenging schools were sufficient. [Gasp! Did anyone think it wouldn’t be enough, given that it represents a bonus greater than the median income?]

“I’m very confident there are people out there would will choose [sic] this career pathway. Most people would say $50,000 is a pretty big financial incentive. But people don’t really do it for the money, they do it because they have the capability and they’re looking for a challenge.”

[It’s a shame Phil Harding hadn’t told the Prime Minister that people don’t really do it for the money. On the Herald’s figures, Key could have saved, per year, about $1m on ‘Change Principals’, $10m on ‘Executive Principals’, $20m on ‘Expert Teachers’ and $50m on ‘Lead Teachers’.]

Secondary Principals’ Association president Tom Parsons called it a “wonderful initiative“.

“It’s super, what a game changer, what a tremendous thing.

“They’ve taken the politics out of this[in election year, too – truly amazing!] and are just looking at the welfare and the benefits for every New Zealander at school now, and in the future.”

Parsons, who is principal of Queen Charlotte College in Picton, has been a critic of many Government policies in the past two years, including the introduction of national standards.

So much positivity can take your breath away – but a few calm, deep breaths and a little attention to detail can bring the positivity meter back to something slightly more credible. The clues to that more credible vista are actually plain to see.

Change principals will be encouraged to work in lower decile schools to lift their performance. [Presumably such ‘top Principals’ don’t already come from lower decile schools?]

Mr Key says it is designed to give teachers the opportunity to further their careers in front of the classroom.

He says they’ll be chosen by an expert government appointed panel.

“They’ll have to be assessed, like everyone that applies. Any teacher, or principal will be free to apply.

A Change Principal, and an Executive Principal, is appointed by an “expert government appointed panel“. Expert Teachers, in turn, are appointed by their Executive Principal: “Executive Principals will oversee the appointment of Expert Teachers and the appointment will be for up to four years.” (from John Key’s full speech).

Change Principals sound remarkably similar to the current role of ‘Limited Statutory Managers‘. An LSM can be appointed to Boards to direct schools in relation to specific aspects of governance, including ‘student achievement’:

A limited statutory manager (LSM) is appointed for the board of trustees by the Secretary for Education, at the direction of the Minister of Education, to work on a particular aspect or aspects of the board’s governance role, while the board remains in existence. This is because of risks to the operation of the school, or the welfare or educational performance of the students. A component or components of the board’s responsibilities are temporarily removed from the board and are vested solely in the LSM. The person appointed to this role is selected because of the skills required and their compatibility with the school environment. The extent of the board’s role and responsibilities that is vested in the LSM is formally stated in a New Zealand Gazette notice.

But the biggest clue to the kind of ‘change’ National can really believe in is provided by the constant reference to student ‘performance’ and ‘achievement’. Here’s a sampler from the Prime Minister’s State of the Nation speech:

Executive Principals will have a proven track record in raising achievement and they will pass on their knowledge and expertise to other principals.

They [Executive Principals] will provide leadership across communities of schools, supporting other principals to raise student achievement.

Expert Teachers will have a proven track record in raising the performance of their students, particularly in maths, science, technology and literacy.

A study published earlier this month by researchers at North Carolina State University, Brigham Young University and the University of California-Irvine, for example, finds that parental involvement — checking homework, attending school meetings and events, discussing school activities at home — has a more powerful influence on students’ academic performance than anything about the school the students attend. Another study, published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, reports that the effort put forth by parents (reading stories aloud, meeting with teachers) has a bigger impact on their children’s educational achievement than the effort expended by either teachers or the students themselves. And a third study concludes that schools would have to increase their spending by more than $1,000 per pupil in order to achieve the same results that are gained with parental involvement

…

So parents matter — a point made clear by decades of research showing that a major part of the academic advantage held by children from affluent families comes from the “concerted cultivation of children” as compared to the more laissez-faire style of parenting common in working-class families.

… [and, it’s the kind of talking parents do with their children]

a study conducted by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health and published in the journal Pediatrics found that two-way adult-child conversations were six times as potent in promoting language development as interludes in which the adult did all the talking. Engaging in this reciprocal back-and-forth gives children a chance to try out language for themselves, and also gives them the sense that their thoughts and opinions matter. As they grow older, this feeling helps middle- and upper-class kids develop into assertive advocates for their own interests, while working-class students tend to avoid asking for help or arguing their own case with teachers, according to research presented at American Sociological Association conference earlier this year.

In fact, the Prime Minister didn’t even have to read “decades of research” or go to sociology conferences to discover this point.

Research on student learning consistently shows that the largest source of variation in student learning is attributable to differences in what students bring to school – their abilities and attitudes, and family and community background – factors that difficult for policy makers to influence, at least in the short-run.

Perhaps John Key just ‘mis-spoke’ on that claim that “[a] mountain of evidence shows that the quality of teaching – inside the classroom – is the biggest influence on kids’ achievement“. Perhaps he meant to say “[a] mountain of evidence shows that – inside the classroom – the quality of teaching is the biggest influence on kids’ achievement“.

Or maybe not.

But there’s an even more important point, once again very clearly made, concerning ‘student achievement’ and ‘performance’: How is this ‘achievement’ and ‘performance’ going to be determined?

After all, not only is ‘lifting student achievement’ the underlying problem that the Prime Minister claims is the intended target of these proposals, but, vitally, it is on proven ability to do just this (lift student achievement) that Executive Principals, Change Principals, Expert Teachers and Lead Teachers will be identified (and, consequently, appointed).

Does the government perhaps have a sense of how ‘lifting student achievement’ can be identified?

Well, yes. And it’s less about ‘clues’ than it is about explicit statements.

National standards have taken time to bed in, and we’re working to improve the consistency of assessments. But the information they provide has been invaluable in determining where to put resources and effort to lift achievement.

Because lifting achievement, each year and in measurable steps, is the whole point of going to school. [Now they tell me!]

Also, of course, John Key, in the same speech, referenced that other test-based measurement system of achievement; the OECD PISA tests:

In fact, we have been on a gradual downward slide [in PISA] since the early 2000s.

In 2000, for example, our 15-year-olds were ranked fourth in the OECD’s study for achievement in maths, with only Hong Kong, Japan and Korea ahead of us. Now we’re ranked 23rd.

Today’s 15-year-olds in New Zealand are performing worse, on average, than 15-year-olds in 2000.

Last year Education Minister Hekia Parata hosted the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher, who designed the Pisa system, and was told that top-performing countries ensured the most talented school leaders and staff went to the most needy schools.

In Shanghai, which topped the most recent results, vice-principals at successful schools can only become principals if they show they can turn around one of the lowest-performing schools.

Mr Schleicher told the Herald at the time that some New Zealand schools in disadvantaged areas did much better on the Pisa test, and the reasons for that needed to be shared across schools.

Yes, for this government at least, ‘achievement’ is ‘performance’ on one or other test. Oddly, when the latest PISA rankings came out in December, The Listener ran this article:

But as Pisa’s influence has grown, so has the attention it gets from academics. And 13 years in – with a towering stack of policy and reforms and reputations at stake – some who have examined Pisa closely are adamant that the whole thing is built on swampy statistical ground. Many believe there are problems with the way data is collected and analysed. These problems go so deep and matter so much, some say, that we should ignore the rankings completely – and certainly stop using them to drive changes to the way we teach our children.

Of course, it’s also true that ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t measure it‘ – but I guess that’s defeatist.

For me, the saddest aspect of these announcements is that they represent one more step in re-engineering New Zealand into a depthless country where the siren calls of ‘achievement’ and ‘aspiration’ have infiltrated into every nook and cranny of our lives.

We have now almost totally refashioned the world – into which we bring our children – into one that screams out to them from every direction that to live is to be judged, measured, compared, evaluated and – as often as not – found wanting.

Recruiting ‘Executive Principals’ and ‘Expert Teachers’ to that task is simply the latest plodding step to a dreary endpoint.

In his speech, John Key claimed that:

In the end, these initiatives are about kids.

If only.

The Corpse flower blooms spectacularly, and only briefly – but its stench lingers.

Yes, language isn’t everything but it, at the least, nudges issues (and proposed ‘solutions’ to perceived problems) towards particular ways of thinking about them. If we’re not careful we can find ourselves going along for the ride without realising where the words on the ticket will take us.

Thank you so much for your article, so many people seem to be blinded by the dollars going to education without looking deeper into this policy and the relentless push for standardisation regardless if this is good for children.

Same old divide and rule. Impress / confuse the voters by seeming to invest in education but in reality it’s creating a buffer class who will have a vested interest in maintaining the enhanced pay and status they get from doing the government’s dirty work – which is opening the door to the further erosion of national pay and conditions and boosting the private sector. To call it cynical doesn’t begin to do it justice.

It also gives the Keyster the opportunity to prattle on about how he dragged himself up out of abject poverty in a state house with a solo mother to go to university and become PM and if he can do it so can anyone as long as they have an excellent school like the one he went to ….

And of course the fact that Burnside is a good state school is ALL down to the teachers – nothing to do with the broader demographics. Aranui can become as excellent a school as Burnside – if they just sort out the teachers – and who better to do that than other higher paid and higher status teachers?

Wonder why the Keyster’s mother didn’t get offered a state house in Aranui?

I’m am instinctively skeptical of anything that comes from John Keys mouth however in this case i empathize with the PPTA’s cautious optimism. We should recognize that the discrepancies in student achievement are greatest within schools than between schools and I have witnessed this in a number of instances. It is the norm that a class who is achieving poorly is right next door to class who is doing exceptionally well. I firmly believe that this is due to 2x main factors, Empowerment and accountability. I believe that Senior management and Head of departments do not empower their staff to make pedagogical shifts nor do they hold them accountable when they do not meet the registered teacher criteria. Therefore I agree with nationals (never thought i’d say that) initiative as it recognize that change management is a crucial aspect in reforming (or sustaining) our education sector. The initiative to empower lead teachers to manage and empower change is also valid.
I hold a position in which i am expected to empower other teachers to make beneficial (to the students) shifts but i do not get anything extra. in teaching there is a large majority of the ‘old guard’ who refuse to adapt to the students needs. Energetic and ambitious teachers are being drained by their resistance and their efforts are being undone by conservative pedagogies. By rewarding progressiveness I can see a huge benefit to students.

I would be upset however if these new allowances go only to senior management who already suck up many of the units but often implement very few initiatives and can seem disconnected from the needs of the students.

Thanks for the thoughtful observations. You’ve obviously had some experience at trying to improve the teaching of others and I realise that that might be quite dispiriting.

There was an interview between Kathryn Ryan and a Professor Emeritus of Education from Arizona State University in which he argued against policy reliance on individual principals or teachers to make changes, arguing that ‘turn-around’ schools (supposedly caused by ‘turn-around principals’) are highly contextualised. That may be one important reason why, at a personal level, you struggle to produce the kinds of changes you would wish. From the Professor in the interview, it sounds very much like we don’t really understand the highly contextual factors that come together to produce good change, reliably.

You say that “We should recognise that the discrepancies in student achievement are greatest within schools than between schools“. I’d be interested in any links to research that supports this claim (or descriptions of the research with details of how to find it). That’s because it seems to go against the finding from the research – which was emphasised in the interview and in a couple of links I provided in the post, including a link to Treasury’s summary of the research – that the greatest influences on student achievement are outside the school.

Also, are you able to flesh out your point that “change management is a crucial aspect in reforming (or sustaining) our education sector“? ‘Change management’ is a particular approach to – or use of – management. Is it ‘change management’, in and of itself, that you would be keen to see or some particular outcomes you have in mind that you would hope would result from a change management process? I ask because ‘change management’ won’t necessarily result in particular changes occurring. In addition, it might also have some unintended consequences that undermine whatever the explicit goals of the change management may be.

Another interesting comment you make is that “there is a large majority of the ‘old guard’ who refuse to adapt to the students needs” and that “[e]nergetic and ambitious teachers are being drained by their resistance“. At a fundamental level I would have thought that students’ (i.e., children’s) needs, so far as learning goes, haven’t changed much at all (that would be quite astonishing). I understand that technologies change, as do trends in pedagogy – but that’s not quite the same as “students needs”, is it? So, do you mean that entrenched ways of teaching are not aimed at providing individual attention to students’ learning? If that’s so, then I guess I’d agree that time for one-on-one tutoring between a teacher and a pupil may be very important. Will having lead teachers, executive principals, etc. enable this time for individual focus to happen?

Once again, thanks for taking the time to comment – always appreciated.

why not put the funds into the front line of teaching, reduce teacher:pupil ratio and reduce overwork pushed onto teaching staff – let them concentrate (spend time, energy & resources) on helping individual children. What’s the point of towering piles of overpaid staff, to give YET MORE instructions to people who already have their hands full. …why is our educational output getting worse?? …and why pay more to accelerate that process?

I agree with mist42nz, in that wouldn’t the kids be better off if all that money was put towards more teachers (and smaller class sizes) instead of more bosses for the teachers who are already under heaps of pressure.

“Change principals will be encouraged to work in lower decile schools to lift their performance. [Presumably such ‘top Principals’ don’t already come from lower decile schools?]”

Very good point about the ‘top Principals”.

It appears that National/Key’s assumption is that it is lower decile schools who need to have their performance lifted. So why would that be? Have they all somehow just ended up with crappy teachers and principals? -because that is what this policy seems to be saying – or is the fact that they are “low decile” (with all the disadvantages for their students that that entails) the real reason for student under achievement? I think it’s the latter and that breaking up the unity of the teacher unions is a big reason for this policy being introduced.

If, as the NZ Herald calculates, the cost will be in the vicinity of $359 million, one wonders where the Education budget will be cut if at the same time National is maintaining it’s target of returning to surplus by 2014/15?

Where will the money come from, as National so often demands from Labour when they announce a policy initiative?